This is the trouble with discussions on this topic. Everytome Survivorship bias comes up, someone provides "counter evidence" which happens to be a picture perfect example of survivorship bias.

Most serious people don't succeed in business. It is hard to become a millionaire. Way more people with the exact traits you'd describe as being what's needed for success have failed than succeeded.

It's not that far from victim blaming, even if not intentional.

Do you have proof of that assertion?

I'd tend to largely agree with the OP, although I think he's overstating the point a bit. It's certainly not a great deal harder to get to the millionaire point as an entrepreneur than as a conventional salaried worker - assuming you have the appropriate character traits. If you're a self-starter with a fair amount of willpower and the ability to effectively learn, lifestyle businesses (as distinct from unicorns) are not massively tricky to grow. They're not easy, and there's definitely a learning curve, but it's on the "doable" end of the scale.

(Background: I've built a few, and I teach other people to build them.)

Addendum: we should probably also start by defining "failed" here. If you mean "way more people's first businesses fail than succeed", I'd agree with you, absolutely. If you mean "way more people have started more than 8 businesses following best practice and have had zero successes than have had any success", I'm much more skeptical. It's an axiom - even in the talks by famous successful people mentioned in the comic - that you generally need a few attempts to get the hang of launching and running anything.

A successful lifestyle business takes a lot of learned knowledge, and by virtue of building a single one you've had more success than most. Just beating the odds on one was your survival, once you did that you had a lot of advantages.

Bigger serial entrepreneurs often have similar patterns. One success allow you to make another which allows you to make another, all with varying degrees of success and with failure effectively subsidized. See Mark Cuban, Ev Williams, Pewter Thiel.

Small business failure rates: well, for starters, the usually-quoted numbers have been updated as of late. A quick Google shows that most sources are converging on around a 60% success rate for small businesses at the moment. (I think that's actually unrealistically high - I'd estimate more like 40% and guess they aren't accurately polling online businesses, but hey.)

Secondly, there's a significant difference between small business failure rates and small businessperson failure rates. As I mentioned above, most people's first businesses will fail. That will obviously skew the numbers in favour of failure: indeed, given that it's surprising the survival rates are as high as they are.

You're correct that it's (sometimes) easier to build a successful business after you've already built one. However, you don't mention the secondary point, which is that it's also much easier to build a successful business after you've already tried really hard and failed at one.

Most people can not afford a failed business. If you are looking at repeated tries, you are taking a huge amount of survivorship bias already.

For example, infoproducts (or any kind of digital product) are very cheap to start up. They take time, but not necessarily a lot of money.

I have met several very smart people who have done great things but have not been fortunate enough to succeed financially because (for example) some well-funded, well-connected silicon valley competitor came out of nowhere and took all the market share through the sheer force of advertising. Many things can go wrong.

I have known people start companies who do everything right. Have studied all literature, hired great people. Still failed.

I have known who do have the first clue about running business, fumbled their way around. Tried do everything themselves. Yet Succeeded.

To the last guy, entrepreneurship is easy and everyone can do it. To the first guy it is hardest thing ever.

Sure. If it is not so hard, everyone would do it. If everyone was a millionaire, who would do actual unpleasant work? Who would clean, run hospitals, build infrastructure? Who would work for your startup so you can make money?

Your comment is such an example of survivorship bias!

Capitalism is a competition. You won, good for you. Don't tell the rest they can win too, that's insulting. You won because someone lost.

I also have found that many people are OK to do some jobs for me that I find really really unpleasant. You need to find the right person for the right "unpleasant" though. This is the beauty of capitalism.

And I am now a millionaire. And when I describe what I do, people yawn and don't want to do it. Even if I find it quite darn interesting.

Beware survivorship bias: I strongly believe it is much easier, and way most likely, to become a millionaire if you set your mind to become a millionaire, and not a billionaire. Many more ways and options. No need for a wild unproven new idea.

Did you find it interesting to begin with? Or did you just think the sector would be a good investment and then later, after you were successful, it became interesting?

But after working on this for many many years, improving little things here and there, then a few bigger things, it became more and more interesting, with a sense of pride that comes with competence and achievement, regardless of the sector.

I got lucky with finding that opportunity that really met my skills. But I actually had been looking for one for a while, so it's half lucky. And nobody gave me money. I forced it then, and ever since, because nothing comes easy.

But I am lucky also because I don't have a very strong competition. But maybe because I am in a niche, so not fully lucky?

Sorry for being not very specific in all this...

It may work for anyone, but not for everyone. I love that in English those words sound so similar. I might be tempted to consider that's part of the problem (as part of the larger "how does language influence thought" topic, where the answer currently seems to be "generally not too much, but it depends"), but in my (non-English speaking) country the same kind of thinking isn't exactly unknown either.

But if you decide to start a plumbing company in the US, and if you have the brains, put the hard work, talent and discipline to run it very very well even just in a local area, I would not be surprised that you can reasonably become a millionaire over time. Because it's always hard to find a good plumber and electrician. But many people yawn at plumbing, and you'll never be a billionaire. And it will take more than 3 years, and it won't be flip and repeat.

> lots of businesses fit it pretty well.

Keyword: "businesses". If everybody follows that path, who is going to work at those businesses?

You completely failed to grasp my point. You keep looking at a niche and miss the big picture: I only works for a few!

Not to mention what it would mean if everybody could become a millionaire, never even mind how.

This is false, and frankly a bit insulting.

If capitalism was just a competition, we'd still be fighting over castles and wheat and Trojan women. Cars, computers, and indoor plumbing wouldn't exist.

Agreed.

> There is WAY more wealth around on earth in 2017 than there was in 1917, 1017, or 117

Agreed. Also inequality is higher than ever.

> Most of the wealthiest folks get rich by inventing/creating new wealth, not by stealing from others.

False. They get rich by extracting surplus out of the new wealth created by someone's labor. Whether we call that stealing or not I don't care.

> If capitalism was just a competition, we'd still be fighting over castles and wheat and Trojan women. Cars, computers, and indoor plumbing wouldn't exist.

As I said, wealth is not a zero sum game.

But for someone to be rich, someone has to be poor. By definition. For someone to extract surplus, someone has to create value--i.e. work. By definition.

Now, you could argue that in a society with a lot of wealth, one can be "poor by definition" or a salaried worker, and still live a life in dignity. I concede that this could be a theoretical possibility. It could make for an interesting science fiction novel.

In most parts of the real world (including the USA), being poor is miserable and doing salaried work is alienating and most often exploitative.

So 1) not everyone can be wealthy and 2) for a single person to become more wealthy someone else gets poorer.

Clearly relative wealth is a zero sum game. By definition - relative wealth is defined by your difference from the mean, so any change in society's overall wealth is subtracted off.

Absolute wealth is empirically not zero sum. Any disagreement about whether "wealth is zero sum" is either disputing that empirical result, or arguing that the relative wealth definition is more important somehow. So if you're going to argue that you should provide some reasoning.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, and that maximising something like median wealth is what's optimal for human flourishing.

So almost all acknowledge that luck can play a factor, how much can sometimes be up for debate. So if you are lucky do you deserve all that comes your way? or should you play nice and share? And if someone else's luck was even partly the cause of your misfortune how would you feel?

I don't have the answers but I think the subject is worth thinking about; especially as it seems difficult to square the circle.

For example, cleaning companies - often started by one person doing the cleaning - are an absolutely textbook example of entrepreneurship.

Some of those entrepreneurs then become millionaires :)

(Updating this post: obviously a lot of unpleasant work is done by non-entrepreneurs. But the maxim of "find something necessary but unpleasant and start a company doing it as a high-success-chance play" is also very true: entrepreneurs don't, as a class, all avoid the nasty stuff.

In the UK, the phrase I'm looking for is "where there's muck, there's brass.")

Business failure = not serious. Got it.

>But I know some billionaires and do not envy them.

So you know multiple billionaires and think your situation is normal?

Are you sure this is the right thing to learn considering how many businesses ran out of money because of hiring too soon? In fact, prevalent advice is to not push the hiring pedal until it becomes unmanageable.

Taking a (for example) safe route into early retirement is not "doing nothing". Most of the startup founders will still be working (because X years invested into a failed startup has set them back) when I'll be retired sipping drinks on the beach.

I think it helps to consider which things done by successful people were necessary. Don't worry so much about whether they were sufficient, because that's going to involve a whole bunch of luck as well. But you can't win if you don't play.